Air France has unveiled its new business class cabin, saying that the new two-meter bed is one of the longest on the market.

The airline, which is investing some €110 million in its business class cabin, will offer the new seat on long-haul services from the end of this year.

Air France says that by investing in its business class cabins during the economic crisis, it’s now in a perfect position to look after premium passengers during the recovery – which the International Air Transport Association (IATA) says is well underway.

A flight attendant working for Air France has been charged with 26 counts of theft. For more than a year, she operated stealthily as business class passengers slumbered; an apparently comforting flight attendant who poured tea for travellers with one hand and swiped their bank cards with the other.

But the game is finally up for an Air France flight attendant, who allegedly took to rifling through passengers’ pockets in mid-air to solve her money problems. She was arrested on the runway of Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport on Friday, and faces a prison sentence if found guilty of a string of robberies on flights from France to Asia.

Police said the items that the 47-year-old stole ranged from credit cards and cash – in multiple currencies – to jewellery and designer watches.

US airline Continental has denied responsibility for a deadly Concorde crash that spelt the end of supersonic travel as its mechanics went on trial in France with French engineers.

Judge Dominique Andreassier read out the charges against the US airline Continental and two of its technical staff who are accused of the manslaughter of 109 people on the plane — most of them German tourists — and four hotel workers on the ground.

The court will decide whether to side with investigators and technical experts who say the crash was caused by a strip of metal that fell off a Continental DC-10 that took off shortly before the Concorde on July 25, 2000.

Air France has introduced a new economy class seat which it claims will save 1,700 tonnes of fuel a year — the equivalent of 650 flights from Paris to Marseilles.

The new design, being introduced into the airline’s short-haul cabins from January 30, offers passengers 5 to 7.5 cm more leg room and is 40 percent lighter than previous seats used on the airline’s fleet of Airbus A319s, A320s and A321s. The reduction in weight is expected to reduce emissions by 5,200 tonnes of CO2 per year, as each aircraft will weigh approximately 750kg less.

Air France-KLM, Europe’s biggest airline, which has already been forced to cut operations in the economic crisis, saw passenger traffic fall 6.4 percent in June, the company said.

The biggest drop came in Asia, where passenger numbers fell 10.8 percent, while traffic in Africa and the Middle East dropped just 0.2 percent. The European network saw a 6.8-percent decline in traffic.

Air France-KLM said it carried a total of 6.4 million passengers in June.